The Girl With Stars In Her Eyes
by idiosyncraticWordsmith
Summary: Karkat Vantas is luckier than he feels he should be, with the chance to take Jade Harley out for the night with him. She obviously is flushed for him as well, at least to some extent, but what chance does he have with a girl of such intelligence, such beauty, such compassion? How can a sludgeblooded mutant hope to win the affections of a girl with stars in her eyes?


The Girl With Stars In Her Eyes

She had all the radiance of starlight, and all the elegance of moonlight. She had a mind like lightning and a heart like cosmic fire. All the beauty of the night sky, all the presence of matter, and, as far as he was concerned, all the perfection of the cosmos, distilled into a single human girl. He had felt this way before - he wasn't a stranger to flushed feelings. But all those other flush-crushes were made to seem like dust on a table when he compared them to her, and her eyes seemed to twinkle with the burning lights of a billion galaxies. She was a girl with stars in her eyes.

She was wearing her favorite dress tonight - her 3 AM dress. The black one with the faint starry pattern and the slight green tint that made it look like she was wearing space itself. She walked over to him, in his own clothes - human male formal attire, in his color scheme. Brown tuxedo, brown pants, scarlet shirt, crimson tie, with his trademark grey sign in the form of a necklace dangling over his chest. He would've just worn black and white, but he wanted to look especially nice for her. Wearing red especially would normally make him uncomfortable - but it was almost impossible for him to hate anything about himself when she was around.

She walked over to him, her midnight black hair cascading down to her back swishing a bit as she walked through the cool, crisp air. As she approached with such presence - even though neither she nor anyone else would ever call it "presence" - he suddenly felt inadequately dressed. These rags weren't good enough for her. The slush in his veins wasn't good enough for her. Nothing about him was good enough for her. He suddenly considered calling the whole thing off. Say that something came up. Or that he's just not ready. Anything to save him the pain and humiliation of trying to go through with this night, anything to keep him from having to look at those stars in her eyes and knowing that they're no stars of his. He was resolved. He would call it off. It was a shitty idea to start and the pain he felt for it was earned for thinking he could pull any of this off.

But before he could speak, however, she threw her arms around him and hugged him, and the world stood still for a second. He felt the soft cushion of her wild but contained hair on his cheek, the flutter of her heart on his chest, the way she held him so tenderly yet so affectionately. And suddenly, the rags on his back couldn't matter less. Suddenly, the color of his blood was a trivia fact. Some how, without even saying a word, she had convinced him that all that loathing, all that hatred, all the anger he felt towards himself, and all the fear he had about the evening, was pointless and unfounded. He had come up with a hundred thousand unique and creative insults for himself, and yet they all suddenly seemed like dusty trophies of the past instead of applicable descriptors.

"Hi, Karkat." She said, her voice sweet and mature.

"Hey, Jade." He replied, his voice coarse and scratchy.

The simplest possible dialogue, yet it set the mood for the whole evening. It didn't have to be anything else, just that, and his heart was filled up with her, like a star filling the void around it with radiation and warmth. They exchanged words that meant everything and nothing. You look beautiful. You look handsome. Jokes were exchanged. Laughter filled the air like the music of the spheres. They walked and talked across the night, filling each other with happiness. They held hands, they ate together, they looked at each other warmly and traded insults jokingly. She would mention that she had always been insecure about her beaver teeth. He would explain his mutation. Secrets were exchanged. They had been friends for so long, but tonight they learned everything about each other, not out of pressure or anything of the sort. No, it was natural, as natural as blood courses through a vein. All his insecurities, all his self-hatred, all his loathing seemed to melt away in her presence, and she seemed to blossom in his.

When the night was waning away, and the time came for them to part for the time being, he thought it would be the most painful thing. Dully he recalled his earlier reluctance to even follow through with the date, and briefly considered berating his past self for old times' sake, but discarded the idea quickly when he realized something: He didn't feel like he was bracing himself for a painful parting. It didn't even feel like the were parting, despite the words of farewell. More like a short intermission between being together to carry on with the other aspects of their lives. Internally, he made a new commitment, a wiser one than he did earlier that night, and one he would make sure to carry out - and did.

Just before they parted, before he finally let go of her hand, he asked her a simple question.

"Can I do something… really, really stupid, and just as fucking crazy?"

"…Sure." She answered, with a smile on her face and a heavy blush.

He used his free hand to cup her face while still holding one of her hands, and, allowing a heartbeat or two to pass to take a deep breath and silence all the voices telling him to wise up and walk away, he leaned in, and the distance between them was terminated, the last bit of interrupting space closed, his lips planting themselves on her own. He felt his face, already flushed lightly, turn a peculiar mix of grey and bright red as his blood rushed upwards like hoofbeasts rushing across a plain. He could feel her free hand place itself on his chest, almost over his hammering heart, her own heart fluttering wildly against his tuxedo. The two feelings - her hand over his heart, her heart fluttering almost in time with his - somehow made the kiss even more emotional, even more personal, even more intimate.

It lasted several seconds, perhaps even almost a full minute, as their nerves steadied themselves and their hearts calmed themselves, hammering less but becoming no slower for it, allowing them to enjoy each other all the more. When finally they parted, it was with a sigh from her mouth, and a single, heartbeat-long, secondary kiss from him, before it entered a decrescendo into two very content, very happy smiles. With a few more hushed words of farewell and affection, they bid each other good night, and parted with each other at last. He sighed to himself, for once actually happy with his otherwise pitiful existence.

Walking off, he looked up at the night sky, and realized it was a sorry substitution for Jade Harley, the girl he was flushed beyond belief for and, if he was right, had fallen in human-love with, and all her lightning and cosmic fire and grace and beauty and perfection and all the billions of galaxies twinkling behind those emerald eyes. Once more, he berated himself for his reluctance to go through with the night.

Why would he ever want to walk away from the girl with stars in her eyes?


End file.
